


These Empty Words

by TwilightLegacy13



Category: The Witchlands Series - Susan Dennard
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Gen, One Shot, Prompt Fic, Tumblr Prompt, casual gretchya hate, mentions of past sexual abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-17
Updated: 2020-11-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27597457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwilightLegacy13/pseuds/TwilightLegacy13
Summary: Based on the Tumblr dialogue prompt:8.  “sorry doesn’t fix it, you know.”After the war is over, some old wounds rise to the surface between Iseult and Gretchya.  A one-shot.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 6





	These Empty Words

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by insertfruitpun (@un-empressed on Tumblr)!
> 
> Content warnings: Unhealthy familial relationships, non-graphic references to past sexual abuse, non-descriptive injury of a side character.

_Stasis_ , Iseult told herself for the dozenth time today, likely for the hundredth. It hardly mattered that the war had only just ended and that they’d barely escaped with her lives—it was, surely, no excuse to conduct herself so carelessly. Especially not around Alma.

 _Stasis in your fingers and toes._ She was Alma, after all, not an enemy and not a threat. She was merely an injured young woman who deserved better than Iseult’s stubborn pettiness. It was a foolish remnant of their childhood together, and what was more it was below her.

So she steadied her hands, gripping the tray more tightly before stepping inside the half-darkened room. It could hardly be considered an extension of the physician’s ward, but it was too small to truly be anyone’s bedroom in such an expansive building. There were many rooms such as this scattered nearby, and those who had been injured in the battle were using them while they recovered.

The breath hissed out of her lips before she could begin to utter a greeting, however forced, to Alma. Any words she summoned now would be useless, as her sister in all but blood and Threads slept propped against numerous cushions to ease her breathing.

“She rests,” Gretchya said quietly, nearly causing Iseult to upset the tray she held in her surprise. Her mother, clad in her typical Threadwitch black, had nearly blended into the shadows.

“I—”

“Calm yourself,” she admonished, rising to her feet in a fluent motion and crossing over to where Iseult stood.

She nodded, taking a breath to do as her mother bid her before continuing. “I brought dinner for her. Though…it seems I’m not early enough.” She dipped her chin to indicate the meal she’d taken up with her. It wasn’t much, as the healers and cooks in Ontigua were busier now than they’d ever been, but the soup was warm and the bread, if not fresh, wasn’t too stale yet. It would have been good enough for a recipient that wasn’t asleep.

“She was merely exhausted,” Gretchya explained. “As everyone else has been. The Earthwitch healer just left.”

“Hmm.” Iseult slipped past her to set the dinner tray down on Alma’s bedside table, fully prepared to walk out the door again without another word. It was unlikely that she’d be stopped from doing so. She was used to her presence not being felt.

But she had gotten to the doorway when Gretchya spoke again. “You’ll be glad to hear that he said all she would need to do is rest. It was just the broken ribs, as we thought, and they didn’t damage anything else.”

She _was_ glad to hear it, though something frustrated her about having no time to express her gladness without Gretchya’s prompting. Then again, that was how it had always been. Threadwitches did not have emotions, but Iseult did, so showing them wasn’t her decision to make. The right time, the right place, the right audience…it was all Gretchya’s choice.

Always. But Alma didn’t need someone else to make the choice. She could be the perfect blank slate when it was required, and the cheerful girl when it wasn’t—unlike Iseult, who was far too _expressive_ to be good enough and too dark to be anything else.

She realized that Gretchya was waiting for a response. “Oh. Yes, I am glad.” She stifled a yawn. Unlike Alma, she had hardly had the time to rest between making sure that everyone was unhurt and caring for those who weren’t.

Her mother sniffed. “Not much has occupied your time since the ending of the war. What troubles you?”

“What troubles the rest of us, I presume,” Iseult murmured. It would be futile to argue and insist that she had indeed been busy, so she settled for the petty words she knew her mother would loathe. At least it was expected of her. “The fighting may have stopped, but many countries are tentative to join an alliance.”

“I had not been told this,” Gretchya said with a frown.

“Well, you haven’t spoken to many people but Alma and the healer.” The words were out before she could stop them, before she could remind herself of all the boundaries she kept in place to prevent herself from speaking in such an unfiltered way. “Neither of whom are exactly kept informed.”

_Stasis._

_Stasis in your fingers and toes._

“You’re ungrateful, Iseult.” Her voice had taken on a stern edge, hardening with carefully crafted reprimand. “Alma was injured while trying to assist the armies in war, and while she recovers, she deserves people who will stay beside her to keep her company. Tell me, what was more important?”

“D-does it matter?” Iseult demanded. “Neither of you w-want me here regardless.”

Gretchya pursed her lips. It was such a small movement, but such a calculated one that Iseult would prefer to have her mother shout at her. Then, at least, she would be shown real anger instead of such typical disappointment. “This is not about you and how we feel about you. We are your family, but we’ve hardly seen you since the battle.”

She curled her hands into fists behind her back, fidgeting mindlessly with the edges of her sleeves where it wouldn’t be noticed. “And we h-hardly saw each other for seven years before that, so it sh-shouldn’t be surprising.”

“Control your tongue.” The words felt almost tangible, settling on top of her shoulders to add to the weight she’d had to carry all of her life. Already, she felt the stasis washing over her as it always had upon being chastised for the lack of it, felt the apathy that she was meant to have.

 _No._ The apathy she was _taught_ to have. She wasn’t meant for it any more than she was meant to be the Threadwitch that she wasn’t.

“I have,” Iseult began. At first she spoke in a hushed whisper, but whispering was how she fought back the stammer that crept into her voice. The one that Gretchya hated. “I h-have controlled my tongue,” she continued at a more normal volume, heedless of Alma in the corner of the room. “I’ve held it and b-bitten it until it bled because it was the only way to be your daughter. I w-was only worthy if I was indifferent.”

“Words have never helped me, Iseult,” Gretchya said quietly, gripping her left wrist in front of her. She realized that she’d seen her mother do that countless times as a child, and even later when they had reunited before the battle. She had always assumed that it was another calculated gesture or a simple habit, but she had never thought about why she might be doing it at all. Iseult bore the marks of her struggles on her palm, bicep, and face, and perhaps one of Gretchya’s was hidden beneath her long black sleeves. “And they wouldn’t have helped you either.”

Her lungs deflated in a sigh. “Neither would silence.”

Gretchya’s hand tightened over her own wrist, her fingers slipping beneath her sleeve absently. “Silence is not acquiescence, and often it’s the only thing you have when all other strength has left. Your words become a weapon when you do not use them as often.”

“But there are w-weapons I can use without making myself into nothing.” _I should know. It’s taken me years to make myself into something more than the nothing I was._

“Underestimation,” she murmured slowly, as if each syllable required great thought, “is your best weapon. With it, you have the power.”

If Iseult were a little more reckless in her emotional expression, she might have shivered, for it was almost exactly what she had said to Owl in the Sirmayan Mountains. To make matters worse, she had meant every word of it then as she spoke to the little girl. It was only now, as she was the recipient of the advice, that she realized that sometimes it could be wrong.

“Perhaps sometimes, but some of the power comes from fighting, not from quiet endurance.” It didn’t escape Iseult’s notice that this had begun as a conversation about her stutter, and though much had changed since only minutes before, it wouldn’t stop her from continuing now. They may have been talking about fighting different people, but Gretchya was one person Iseult should never have had to fight.

Unfortunately, one Threadwitch could not see another’s Threads, and her mother misinterpreted. “How dare you make that implication?” Gretchya demanded. For the first time, the hint of real anger sparked in her tone. “For every year of your life, I have fought for _you_ , and I paid for every long battle. Do not presume to teach me about endurance.”

Iseult took a step closer to her, eager in spite of her frustration to correct the misunderstanding. Petty and bitter as she was, she could never tell her mother _that_. “Oh, no. I-I feel sorry for you, truly. I meant only that…fighting for me does not excuse how you treated me.”

There. The words she had longed to say for years had finally escaped her, and for a moment they sent a thrill through her. Then, once her mouth snapped shut and silence fell over the barely-lit room, another heavy weight settled on her—but this was a familiar one, and she realized that she felt no different from before she had said it. Saying it aloud would change nothing, and it merely reinforced the truth that she had never before spoken.

Though, admittedly, the brief look of surprise on Gretchya’s face was almost worth it. Then her Threadwitch calm settled into place again, like she knew it would. “How I treated you,” she repeated dully. “How I treated you like you were different? You were. You are.”

“B-but it shouldn’t matter,” Iseult pressed, the words pouring out of her now like water from a broken dam. “I didn’t ask to be different, and I sh-shouldn’t have needed to ask for your love.”

“You had it,” Gretchya said without hesitation. “You always have. Though if I am being blunt, I saw many signs when you were a child that you may not be the Threadwitch I called you and expected you to be. For that, I am sorry.”

 _Stasis._ “‘Sorry’ doesn’t fix it, you know,” Iseult said quietly. “N-not after so many years. And if you had known I wasn’t a Threadwitch, what would you have done?”

A long pause. “Treated you like the Weaverwitch you are.”

It should have sounded comforting, but it didn’t, not at all. Something about the way Gretchya had said it had made it sound like being a Weaverwitch was different from being her daughter, which was the opposite of what she wanted. 

But still, she played along with the game. “And how would that be?”

“I would have allowed you to express yourself,” Gretchya conceded, “though safely, and with boundaries. I—”

And suddenly, Iseult just couldn’t bear to have this conversation anymore.

“No. You d-don’t _allow_ me to express myself, and we’ve waited too long for this. I don’t know…where to go from here. An apology isn’t enough. I’m not sure what is.”

Before Gretchya could respond, Alma began to stir. Iseult turned at the rustling to see her eyes flutter open, see her lips part in a soft exhalation of pain as she moved and jostled her broken ribs. “Iseult,” she murmured breathlessly. “I haven’t seen you since…since everything.”

There were a thousand things she could have said, and just as many that she should have, but instead she gestured vaguely towards the bedside table. “I brought you dinner. And I was just leaving.”

And Iseult swept out of the room again, leaving Alma and her mother behind.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this in algebra class this morning, which led to me having no idea what he was talking about for the end of the lesson. Moral of the story: Do not write while doing math. 
> 
> In all sincerity, though, I hope you liked the fic! Please leave kudos/comments if you enjoyed it :D


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